Agricultural development companies and other businesses within the agricultural industry often analyze samples of agricultural products, such as seeds and plant tissue, to determine various traits or characteristics of the sample. For example, in seed breeding, large numbers of seeds are sampled and analyzed to determine whether the seeds possess traits of interest. Often, to analyze a sample of an agricultural product, the sample is ground into very small particulates and mixed. Various testing can then be performed on the mixed sample to determine various traits or characteristics. For example, the mixed sample can undergo near infrared (NIR) testing to determine certain organic chemical levels of the sample.
Accurate testing of ground samples requires that the sample be uniformly mixed and that the uniform mixture be maintained during testing. However, known seed grinding systems and methods generally fail to produce sufficiently uniform mixtures resulting in undesirable striations in the sample leading to non-representative samples for testing. Additionally, known grinding systems and methods typically are not capable of automatically transferring the ground and mixed sample to the desirable sample container to be used during analysis.